


Them Heavy People

by diopan



Category: Berserk
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, the commitments - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/pseuds/diopan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The White Hawks, best Kate Bush-and-ocassionally-Dire-Straits cover band in Dublin. Well, at least North Dublin, someone would clarify, someone being the sort of man who preceded his sentences with “actually”, correcting statements as if he'd declared war on hyperbole. Someone, in other words, who was a prick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. open doorways

“Griffith'll know what to do, no need to worry about that,” Judeau said.  
His words, swollen and heavy from all the beer, rained with relief over the members of The White Hawks, best Kate Bush-and-ocassionally-Dire-Straits cover band in Dublin. Well, at least North Dublin, someone would clarify, someone being the sort of man who preceded his sentences with “actually”, correcting statements as if he'd declared war on hyperbole. Someone, in other words, who was a prick.

 

“Even if you don't like cover bands” a thirty-year-old once said after clarifying he did not in fact like cover bands, “you have to admit that kid's going places.” No one ever said where the places where, but definitely not here, because that kid's gonna be somebody. And that's only if he ain't here no more.  
There was no denying it and the manager of the little dingy place up on North Circular told Rickert—the skinny little boy of the owner who helped dry glasses most evenings—that he'd seen good bands, and he'd seen good frontmen, and he'd sometimes even thought “he'll make it” and it had never actually happened but he'd never seen a band like this one, it's just a cover band, he repeated, but he'd never seen a lead singer like this.  
“And,” he said placing both hands on the worn wood of the bar forcing Rickert to inadvertently stop drying the glass he held, “and he'll get out of here.”

 

“I think it's really irresponsible they cancelling on us just like that!”  
“They closed down for sanitation, s'not like they wanted to fuck with us specifically,” Judeau's explanation was met with air being blown out of a nose that said it wasn't a good enough reason.  
“Don't feel too good about The Black Dog,” Corkus blew out of his nose again, “that Guts fella works there,” he said taking another sip of his stout. “Used to play drums or guitar or trumpet with that Gaston bastard, rednecks the lot of them,” he added after a pause told him Judeau and Pippin weren't opposed to playing The Black Dog.  
“He wasn't a regular member and he's just a barkeep now. It doesn't matter anyway, it's arranged. 30 pounds, 50 if the place's packed, and two pints for each of yous,” Casca, who'd just come in the room let them know.  
The faces of three men looked up to her questioning, “Griffith's still there talking things over,” she answered their silence.

 

“You can all stand here, it's five of yous, isn't it? I think yous can fit here and—” he stopped abruptly and didn't resume until what seemed like an impossibly long time.  
Griffith, with his subtle, delicate beauty that so well fit the times, didn't say anything, content with listening to what the bartender was telling him.  
“And,” he finally said, “are yer instruments… d'you've synthetisers and that?”  
“No.”  
“Oh, good,” Guts said even though he knew full well The White Hawks did not use synthetisers.  
Not that he didn't appreciate synths—he didn't—but it wouldn't have mattered because The White Hawks were actually good. What little he knew of music—it was more than little—he couldn't really say why he'd learned—to have something to talk about with his step father who never spoke a word, or to have something to do whilst on the dole—still he _could_ say that synths were shit, but it wouldn't have mattered because The White Hawks were actually good.

It was about a minute that he stood in silence, looking at the other man, until he noticed he was looking at the other man in silence and, frowning, said there were things he ought to be doing.  
“Don't play anymore, do you?”  
“What?”  
“The drums, you were good,” Griffith said, _you were good_ like the sky is blue.  
“How'd you—”  
“I watched you,” with a sly smile, “last year, was it? Billy Squier songs, right. You were good, good backbone, the drums, I mean. Billy Squier's awful really; mindless, alienated music, disconnected from the core, no heart and soul… you were good though.”

Not that he loved Billy Squier, some was good, some was alright, but who was this pretty-faced boy to say it had no heart and soul, what did he know about that? What did _Kate Bush_ know about that?  
“I s'pose there's a lot of heart in Weather Heights, eh?” he said in the most sarcastic tone he could muster, sounding astonishingly bitter and hurt.  
Griffith laughed, it was real laughter, with emotion, and nodded.  
“You should play with me,” he said now serious, terribly focused as if he were contemplating the fate of the world.  
“I, uh, you?”  
“Yeah, you should play with me.”  
“Fuck off,” he turned around and a glimpse of Griffith's smile was caught in the corner of his eye walking away.

 

***

 

Tonight they didn't play.

 

On the days in which The Hawks played, The Black Dog was packed and if you were lucky there was a possibility of witnessing the grumpy bartender smile when he thought no one watched him during _Brothers in Arms_.

  
The band had only been playing there four nights a week for about four or five months but it seemed to Guts they'd always been there, and he'd always enjoyed their company, that first encounter now a blur he remembered fondly. He wasn't part of the band. “And don't forget, kid, ye ain't a member of the Hawks and that's that,” Corkus said. But he spent every moment with them, even the nights they didn't play. So much in fact that he could honestly say he'd memorised every corner of Griffith's flat, but he would never say it out loud and he had no idea why he had. Not even when he traced the walls of the halls leading up to the flat with his open palms watching Griffith walk ahead of him and turn to face him with a smile that made Guts feel like the ground was caving in, like he was standing on one of the cliffs, like wind was blowing through the moors, weathering the heights. It was just the two of them, when that happened, his hands would sweat heavily against the fabric of the couch. He would leave early on those nights.

  
On more than five occasions—eleven—he stepped in for Pippin on drums and the praise that followed felt surprisingly great. The first one of such occasions had ended with a woman—Guts thought she was a reporter—telling Griffith the drummer was fabulous, especially in _James and the Cold Gun_ , and the pretty-faced boy saying “I know.”  
“The drummer is fabulous and the leader of the band knows” read the Courier article he clipped and stuck to the mirror.

Griffith had stood in front of that mirror, once, looked at himself then looked at the newspaper clipping and turned around.  
“Why Kate Bush?” Guts had ventured, he needed a way to get the thing stuck in his throat out. Either that or drinking some more.  
“I was eight when I listened to _The Kick Inside_ first. Folks at Freebird, on Grafton back then, let me have a listen. Y'know everyone said they'd never heard anything like her. I hadn't listened to anything that meant anything and now here she was, I didn't have to settle, I could get there too, outta here. I could lift myself out of this garbage heap. I do the covers cos I wanna remember that feeling, that I can get there too.”  
Guts had sighed, or done something like it, belched, maybe. Something.  
“Of course ya can. If it's you, course,” and he'd drunk his beer in one gulp, reaching for another.

 

There was very little to do at the pub except pouring pints for the regulars who were suddenly sadder and older and tell young people that tonight The White Hawks didn't play and he _did_ know it was a Saturday, he _did_ know they had not played yesterday, he _did_ know they'd not played Thursday either, but he couldn't tell them why because he didn't know anything else.

 

On Tuesday Griffith had rung at around four from a place that sounded like rain and television with no programming. Guts was asleep, the receiver cradled in his hand next to his ear, and he mumbled a few words—he was used to Griffith's late night calls, not able to remember a time when they didn't exist—but there was something in Griffith's tone when he pronounced a certain word that woke him up.  
“What'd you say? I didn't hear ye.”  
“I said her name was Charlotte, she's English and her father's a—it's not interesting at all, really.”  
“Charlotte?”  
A face—a young girl in the crowd that night sitting alone in the dark corner farthest from the bar, didn't order anything—came to his mind so suddenly he almost scared himself.  
“Yeah, that's her name, but that's not why I'm calling, see, I've got the latest songs ready and—”  
“What?”  
“The latest songs,” his voice was distant, like he was calling from a booth in the middle of the ocean, at the bottom where there's no more light and fishes with big teeth and personal torches swim free. “My own. It's Wednesday tomorrow, today, you'll come to Galway with me an—”  
“No, no. I can't.”  
“…”  
There was no silence, Griffith's phone was drowning in static and muddy waters running upstream, but it went on forever.  
“I'm working tomorrow.”  
“…”  
Forever.  
“Griffith?”  
“I told you,” his voice was raining too, softly pouring out static. “We talked it over. You agreed, said yeah, you'd come to Galway on Wednesday with me. With us. With me. Listen to the songs.”  
“Oh, yeah, uh, I… I didn't think it was that important that I go, everyone else's going. I don't… I don't know. I'm working tomorrow.”

And then they'd said good bye, because Griffith said it was fine, and it wasn't important, and there was nothing particular about Galway or the new songs or anything at all really. Like a lullaby Guts repeated “I'm working tomorrow” and closed his eyes without sleep.

 

He kept telling himself he should call or visit, and he kept telling himself he shouldn't. They just couldn't play, only that. It wasn't as if something had happened and sometimes friends didn't see or talk to each other in a while, it wasn't as if something had happened and sometimes bands cannot play the days they're supposed to play. Only three of them, too, three days, he'd gone longer not speaking to anyone at all.

 

Casca had showed up Tuesday evening visibly angry—there was no way of telling if she was angry at all times or if it was only around him—and let him know they wouldn't be able to make it this week, but she didn't know much more than that. She raised her voice saying she was getting tired of all his questions, she didn't wish to talk of the latest songs and he could ask Griffith himself if fucking Galway interested him so since the two of them got along so well. If he had been a different man he would've thought Casca blamed him for whatever had happened. She tried leaving and was stopped but after stating in no uncertain terms (with her fist on his face) that she wished to leave, he watched her leave, the door closing behind her and not opening again until much later when Finney walked in for his ale.

 

Gaston, who came in on Saturdays to lend a hand, sat on the barstool in front of Guts, drumming his fingers along the music faintly coming from the speakers.  
“Y'know, I like Billy Squier,” he said absentmindedly.  
Guts stared at him in silence.  
“Gets quiet here without'em, no?” He wasn't very good at making casual conversation, he was aware of it and his mam had said it too, but he was better at it than Guts, and for that alone, he couldn't help but like the guy. If it weren't for the tall barkeep, he'd have left ages ago, stop working altogether, maybe hang around his da's shop.  
“Summer's ending, there's less people cos tourists go home. Everything quiets down a bit.”  
“Didn't see lots of tourists this summer, but.”  
“I, y'know, the English girls all go home, I s'pose.”  
Gaston laughed, “Met many English girls, did ye?”  
“No, not really,” he said and Gaston laughed even harder at his reply.

 

It was merely a coincidence that she was sat there, Ultravox's synth hit blaring from inside the pub, one of the three nearby, when Guts found her in the early hours of Sunday after he and Gaston had closed up. The piano forced him to gradually pick up his step—he remembered that winter four years ago when he first heard the song, he didn't know Griffith then and he noticed how different it had all been. Now he can't listen to it without seeing his face. Only you and I. This means nothing to me—and then the image was gone. Hands tucked beneath her knees, face red and swollen, the hem of her shorts wet with falling water not unlike rain, there she was, Casca, alone and small, because she had always thought _Kashka from Baghdad_ was about a girl with a name like hers but maybe it was closer to Charlotte's. Hiccuping and pretending to be angry at Guts—how dare he show up now, he of all people—she explained in the vaguest way she could the unfounded reason for her tears, tears that kept her from seeing the man's face clearly: empty empathy wasn't what was disfiguring his features but she didn't notice.

Casca's vague words didn't leave much space for imagination, regardless. But it's just that which he lacked, he'd always known. So it hurt less. It meant nothing really. So what if _Kashka from Baghdad_ was about a girl with a name like Charlotte?

 

***

 

“'Parently her da's the head of Kings Cross Records, in London,” Judeau took another swig of Guinness, wiped the foam with the back of his sleeve. “Should be good, eh? 'Parently he saw us playin' too.”  
“And what? Ya think they'll give us a record deal? For what? Cover songs? Keep dreamin',” Corkus blew air out of his nose. “Only extraordinary thing about us is Griffith.”  
“Yeah, and that's why they'll give us a deal.”  
Guts placed another ale in front of Corkus.  
“Whaddaya think?” Judeau looked at him. “Charlotte's da?”  
Guts shrugged.  
“He doesn't need anyone's da to get what he wants.”  
They all nodded silently, as if they agreed, and Guts went back behind the bar.

 

They stayed until closing time. They knew as much as Casca about why The White Hawks weren't playing, which was not much more than that they weren't playing, so Guts didn't ask anymore. He stayed behind on his own to mop the floors and polish the bar and stare at the empty chairs whilst Telegraph Road played over the speakers. The knocks on the metal curtain were so soft he surprised himself being able to hear them, as if he knew. When he raised it halfway there was Griffith, boots wet with rain, hair all curled from the humidity.

“Ya look like that fellar from Poison.”  
“Let me in,” Griffith said, no humour in his voice.  
“Wanna drink?”  
“...”  
“Haven't seen ya in a while, yer not gonna speak, then?”  
“Is it horrible if I take the deal myself, no one else?”  
Guts went behind the bar to pour Griffith a drink—whiskey—before answering, signaled for him to take a seat at one of the stools.  
“Got an offer then?”  
“Is it?”

Guts hated the word vulnerable for loads of reasons, many of them relating to his staring at the walls of his step father's kitchen clenching his fists during the empty hours of his childhood, but now he couldn't for the life of him find another word to suit the way Griffith looked. Wrong, too, for someone like Griffith, for Griffith of all people, to look like that. Wrong. Out of place. He'd seen desperation explode into flames, and he didn't wanna see it again.

“Well, I,” then turning to pour a drink for himself, “I think they're with ya cos they believe in ya. They're in it for ya. Ya make them feel,” his strength wasn't words, it wasn't anything, really, except maybe the backbone of the drum which he'd only learned to love, truly love, when he was staring at Griffith's back on the stage, “special, guess. Important. But. It ain't their dream. S'yours. They're in it for ya.”

Griffith stared down at his drink. Guts was grateful, for this. Eye contact didn't suit him either.  
But then Griffith smiled.  
“You'll leave, then?”  
“Guess so,” Griffith said, solemnly, smile gone.  
“Ya should,” and when Griffith put his hand on his, Guts didn't pull away.

 

***

 

Tonight they played their last show. Corkus didn't show but Gaston stepped in as replacement. He wasn't as good but really he also wasn't as bad, so all in all it was fairly balanced. Guts was on drums because Griffith had made him promise, and from behind the drums Guts could pretend he wasn't seeing Charlotte at one of the tables, their biggest supporter. Casca wore black. Judeau wore white. They both pretended not to cry, they both pretended not to hate. The place wasn't as packed as you'd expect, the article on the Courier, courtesy of that same reporter, read the next day, which only made for a more intimate, bordering on melancholy, night. The White Hawks bid their good byes the way they erupted into the scene, not with a bang, but with the whimper of Griffith's guitar, and his vocals on point saying “Oh here I go, don't let me go, hold me down” with his back to the audience.

 

 

On Saturday night Griffith rang at around four from a place that sounded desolate, like he was in the middle of the desert. Guts was asleep, the receiver cradled in his hand next to his ear, and he mumbled a few words—he couldn't remember the last time one of Griffith's late night calls had come. He could but didn't want to. He shouldn't. He'd missed them, he betrayed himself.  
“Griffith,” he mumbled, not a question, but too much like a watercolour in the rain to be anything else.  
“Would you come? To London. With me.”  
“With you...”  
“Yes.”  
“Me?”  
“Would you come to London with me?” now Griffith's tone was too stark, too grounded, too much like when his eyes were on Guts and though it didn't suit him he couldn't find it in himself, damn self where he never found anything really, to look away. Like when he kissed him that night before walking away and Guts asked no one and without words and yes had sung all around the empty room like the book, like the book. Yes.  
“You... and... I?” In sleep, on the shores, over the cliffs, windy moors rolling yes.  
“I'll be waiting at the Ferryport. I'll be there. At five.”  
“Hm,” he says, mumbles, all words inside his brain—not many—forming just one.  
“I'll be there.”

 


	2. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1st person pov cw /: sorry

19 February, 2005

I've just come back from this thing in the Village. Some festival my manager insisted we go to: one of the guys might sign with the label; he organised it too. A group of kids in a small café—“Sidewalk” if you can believe that—call themselves Anti-Folk and pass around an open lute to collect money. The bathroom sink water was stupidly hot; I burned my hand and had to walk outside to stare at the dirty snow.

It seems so long ago since I thought about hopeful young men playing in crowded pubs. Sometimes, I think it never happened. This is nothing like it was back there, of course. They're sophisticated, even the audience is; they drink coffee. Or more like, they try to pretend they are, at least. They pretend they don't really care about sophistication too. It's enough to give you a headache. But they're good... some of them. You wouldn't like them, though. Or maybe you would. I don't really know.

I didn't write to tell you of this, I'm sorry. The last time I saw you, you were about to board the ferry back to Dublin, and I honestly thought you'd come back. To London. To me. I honestly thought just wishing for you to do things—watch me, walk with me, play with the band, stay—was enough for them to happen. For you to do them. I 'd like to say I'm sorry about that, but it'd be a lie; I wouldn't have changed, even if I knew it'd have made a difference. But you know that about me already, don't you? Or I'm just wishing you do.

Truth is, I kept waiting for you to walk out of the small room in the back of the café to pour my drink, but you never did. I hadn't thought of that in very long. I never think about those times.

I suppose thanks are in order. I would've quit altogether, stayed in Dublin forever, if you hadn't left—I think you know. I think that was how you loved me. I hope I'm not wrong. I hated you. I loved you too. Thank you, I know you never cared that much for the music, you just wanted something to do, you told me... so thank you, anyway. I wish I could've done the same for you, but self-sacrifice was not like me.

I'm alright, I'm doing very well. I like New York. It's almost been twenty years so it's a matter of fact it feels like home. I have a house out in Quogue and sometimes in the summer it feels like I'm standing on Forty Foot. I think we went there together once and walked hand in hand on the rocks, I don't really remember. What else can I say? I saw Judeau the other day. Last year, well, the one before that. He lives in San Francisco now, plays with a small ska band there. He always had the worst taste in music. I had to refuse signing him with us. Nothing personal, you know, right?

The tour starts off in Dublin in April. If you'd like to we could go to the pub. I'd like to see it again, even if it's only once. I never think back on those times, I barely remember how it was, that's why I'd like to see it. If you'd like to come meet me, if you can, I'd be happy to meet you.

I'm sorry I'm still not able to be honest with you.

I'd like to say I think about you everyday and I wait for you to come out of rooms to meet me and pour my drinks and be there everyday. But that's not like me, you know that, right?

I'll see you in April, if you'd like. I'll be there.

Yours,  
Griffith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this epilogue in 2012 it was the first thing i wrote of this au n the basis for the rest of it

**Author's Note:**

> honestly the most self indulgent thing i've done & thats sayin a lot. i love the commitments & i love kate bush & i love griffith so there's that.  
> more or less just hinting, a sketch.  
> helps if u know kate bush's discography but it doesn't rly matter.


End file.
